Timely Tips March 2014:

Addressing Those Scary Workplace Productivity Statistics

*Plus, a new "Save the Date" for my Taming E-mail with Outlook and/or Gmail webinar

March 2014

I am sitting in warm sunshine in the lobby of the SeaGate Conference Center in Toledo, Ohio, about to deliver my Taming E-mail session at the ABA Heartland event, celebrating the first sunny, easy travel day I've had in two months. Melt, baby, MELT!! ;-)

As promised, I wanted to turn around the Timely Tips this month very quickly. I want to give you my individual "quick tips" for each of those scary workplace statistics I shared in last month's Timely Tips. Here we go:

Addressing Those Scary Workplace Productivity Statistics

Alright -- let's FIX these scary productivity statistics I shared in last month's Timely Tips.

The average office-based professional now spends 2+ hours every day just working on e-mail. Typically half or more of my program attendees report 3-6 hours of e-mail work daily. SOLUTION: Well, the amount of time you spend on e-mail can possibly be modified by having better organization in your inbox coupled with smarter e-mail habits and routines. Three key ways people lose time with their e-mail is checking it too frequently, rereading messages over and over again with no defined action, and just not having a good organization system in their inbox. We'll address all of these below. Fix these issues, and I'm betting you could drop your time spent on e-mail by 25% or more.

The average professional e-mail user reads each and every e-mail they receive 3-7 times before either taking the action inside that e-mail or adding it to their calendar or task list. 3-7 times!!! SOLUTION: Switch to a "One Look" strategy for your e-mail. If you've attended my sessions in the past, you know I advocate that the very first time you open an e-mail, you DECIDE what you need to do with it (and if you don't have time to make a decision, you don't even have time to look!) Couple that with the philosophy that you are going to handle quick e-mails (those taking a couple minutes or less) right now, and then turning those taking longer into items on your task list or calendar (and, once you do that, you either delete that e-mail or file it into an appropriate subfolder or archive location). If you do this, you can STOP looking at the same e-mails over and over again. Start using this strategy NOW.

20-25% of professional e-mail users check their e-mail inbox 20 or more times per day. Ed. Note: I forgot to tell you last month that this literally makes you stupid -- 10 point loss to your IQ when getting distracted by e-mail and other inputs too frequently throughout the day! That's like missing an entire night's sleep. SOLUTION: Get on a regimen, where you periodically and predictably check your e-mail and other input items. Check every 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes -- whatever allows you to properly balance your needs to be responsive to your clients, customers, and coworkers, with your needs to actually get some work done. And use the "One Look" philosophy shared above EVERY TIME you check your e-mail.

Yet, only 1-3% of these same knowledge workers have had formal, strategic level e-mail management training (that makes you an aberration, as I know you've likely attended one of my classes previously.) SOLUTION: Uh, this one is obvious. If your team hasn't been trained on better e-mail productivity and efficiency, get them some training (I know someone quite good at this.) ;-) The ROI on this is unreal -- I had one client that found the average worker in their firm was saving 2+ hours PER WEEK after taking my Taming the E-mail Beast training session. This session usually pays for itself in a matter of days or weeks.

From my own polling, the average office-based worker gets somewhere between 10-20 unexpected interruptions per day. A recent study by Basex found they lose an average of 4-15 minutes of productivity each and every time they get interrupted. (That translates to 40 minutes to several hours of lost productivity daily simply due to distraction.) SOLUTION: EVERY SINGLE TIME you get interrupted, before you actually address the interruption, write a quick reminder on a sticky note of what you are doing as well as the very next thing you need to do. Then, put that sticky note right on your computer monitor and/or smart phone (where do your eyes go first?) Thus, you'll give yourself a reminder of what you were doing before the interruption occurred once the interruption is over, not losing precious minutes of "backtrack" time after every single interruption. I know -- this is pretty simple -- write a quick reminder note on a sticky -- but IT WORKS! (And a quick thanks to time management guru David Allen for teaching me this gem nearly 25 years ago.)

Any information worker that lacks a basic and effective filing/organization system at the physical (paper), e-mail, and electronic file levels loses on average 1-2 hours PER DAY in lost productivity simply due to not being able to find their stuff when they need it. SOLUTION: Duh -- GET ORGANIZED! Clean up your desk. Clean up your inbox. File your e-mails and other electronic files. Maybe even consider a "Dumpster/Recycle Day" for your whole office, where you actually give them permission to clean up/get organized. You will see your and your team's productivity JUMP if people can actually find what they need when they need it. This isn't rocket science, but the statistics show IT WORKS. Have a home for everything, and put it there when done with it for now. And if you don't have a home for it, MAKE ONE and put it there! (Don't have the time? How about 10-15 minutes a day for the next month?)

And, to cap it off, the average office-based information worker also spends about 1-2 hours per office day doing personal stuff during their work time (much of that personal e-mail and social media.) Quick counterpoint: another recent study found that those workers that OCCASIONALLY take breaks for social media are actually more productive than those that don't. (I think it gives them a little mental break/reset, and also keeps things a bit more fun and less stressful.) Of course, I stress the word OCCASIONAL! SOLUTION: This is becoming more of an issue in many workplaces. I will tell you that the American Management Association recently found that about 80% of major employers are doing at least some form of electronic monitoring of their workers. Perhaps this is something that should be known publicly within your firm? Of course, I don't mind a bit of personal happening during the workday, especially with so many people working longer hours these days. But I would encourage people to ask themselves if they are taking advantage of this to the extreme, and I might even recommend that people do their personal activities on their own personal devices (a la their own smart phones and/or tablet devices) so there is a clean break between their work and personal, especially on company computer systems. And, individual managers, if you believe one of your team members is taking advantage of this, that certainly seems like the perfect opportunity for a private little conversation. ;-)

If you use all of the tips above, I could EASILY see most workers finding at least 1-2 additional hours of pure productivity each and every day. You can do this. Pick your worst offending behavior, and change your habit now, and practice that new habit for 2-3 weeks straight. Then, when you have that one licked, go to the next item on the list. Within a year, you'll be a completely different person with a completely different productivity personality. Get at it!

IT IS MELTING!

If you are in the Great Lakes/Midwest today, I sure hope you find a little time to sneak outside (except for my friends in Minnesota/northern Wisconsin dealing with a bit of the slippery stuff today.) There is this very strange glowing yellowish/whitish ball in the sky that is generating heat you can feel on your skin. I highly recommend you go experience it a bit before it disappears again! (But don't stare -- it hurts your eyes!)

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Until next month, Stay Timely!

Sincerely,

Randy Dean
Randall Dean Consulting & Training, LLC
http://www.randalldean.com

PS: Please consider joining my networking list on LinkedIn -- http://www.linkedin.com/in/randydean (would love your recommendation!) and/or becoming a Taming E-mail fan on Facebook here. Follow me on Twitter @timelyman. (And I'm on YouTube & Google+ too.) ;-)

App of the Month

PaperKarma

PaperKarma-- available both on ITunes app store and Google Play

An attendee in one of my recent Smart Phone Success & Terrific Tablets sessions shared this gem with me -- utterly brilliant: it allows you to take a picture of junk mail (yes, the paper stuff you receive in the mail) with your phone or tablet, and then it removes you from that mail distribution list. Wow. That is seriously cool. Test it out and let me know how it works for you.

Save the Date:
Thursday, March 27
1:00 - 2:30 Eastern
Time

TAMING THE E-MAIL
BEAST
Using MS Outlook and/or Gmail

As I promised last month, I've rescheduled this event, and will be sending out a link to the registration page early next week. Look for that info VERY soon.

Can't make the March 27 date? I'll be recording the session, and will allow people to view the replay also. More info on that next week too.

Don't want to wait? Remember the BizYeti "Always Available" option listed below:

Always available
TAMING THE E-MAIL
BEAST
Webinar Replay

Available on BizYeti

As I said above, you can access a replay of my Taming the E-mail Beast program on BizYeti at any time. It is priced at a reasonable per-person price, and allows you to view my e-mail strategies (especially for MS Outlook users) at your convenience. You can even pause, back up, and replay the tips in real time so you can practice the tips while viewing the webinar.

Here's the link to the webinar replay purchase information.